User Reviews

Reviews by cratez:

4.14/5 rDev -3%vibe: 4 | quality: 4 | service: 4.5 | selection: 4

First of two breweries that my girl and visited on a recent trip to Chicago.

VIBE: clean, simple, and attractive retail store has lots of Half Acre gear like tees, long-sleeve shirts, and glassware. Beer and merchandise prices are listed on two chalkboards. They also sell coffee and guest beers. Growler station had the three year-round offerings (Daisy Cutter, Gossamer, Over Ale) and one seasonal (Captain Fantasy Saison) when we came. The brewery itself is quite small, basically just a large room with a dozen tanks.

SERVICE: the employee at the front was exceptionally welcoming. He gave us a quick tour of the brewery, explaining the brief history of the company and the reasons behind their limited distribution (city and area only). He asked us about our trip and did a commendable job of engaging my non-beer-drinking girlfriend while I tried a t-shirt on. Great service.

SELECTION: I enjoyed samples of the Over Ale and Captain Fantasy and bought a half case each of the Daisy Cutter and Gossamer. Dogfish Head Midas Touch, Southern Tier Inequity, and Sierra Nevada Kellerweiss were serving as the guest brews. A tiny beer lineup, no doubt, but the quality is undeniable and I would definitely frequent the store on a regular basis if I lived in the neighbourhood. Prices for the 4-packs ($8.99) and growler re-fills ($12) are reasonable in my books.

OVERALL: we had a pleasant time here helped along by the gracious store employee. Half Acre is well worth a visit if you happen to be in the area or going to Bad Apple (like we were). Nice brewery with cool people running the place. Check it out.

Stopped here on a Thursday night, it was crowded but we were able to get a table after a few minutes of standing around. The taproom is a bit on the small side and probably could stand to be bigger based on the crowd we encountered. The service was surprisingly good, especially considering how busy they were. The beer selection is good with quite a bit of variety on tap and it seems like they rotate through many of them. The beer quality is good, but not exceptional, everything I had was solid but nothing was memorable, daisy cutter is still the best thing I have had from them. The food was excellent, very nice neauveau gastropub fare. Definitely worth a stop and not far from several other worthy Chicago beer spots.

As the final stop on a tour of transit geeks drawn nationwide to analyze developments on Chicago's Brown Line, we came in after a bone-jarring ridiculously cold day for November. And of course, the brewers were not expecting this early Arctic Vortex either... and all the darks on tap were gone.

This was last year. Everything about the bar was good except one... we had to go get food and bring it in (which has its benefits of great variety in this neighborhood, but also inconveniences.) Half Acre now has an impressive menu and I should go back and check out their food.

While I've rated only a few Half Acre Beers, I like them. They have used their unbelievably successful cash cow recipe, Daisy Cutter, and have as many experiments as a much larger brewer and added food and soon will have another production facility and taproom. In many ways, I find them to be one of the pioneers in Chicago's 3rd Generation of brewers. Most of these are not more than a decade old and are keen on experimenting and keen, now, on complementing food.